In the recent hot weather I’ve found the outfits I feel most comfortable in are my long cotton dresses, especially the teal one I made in February for our holiday and a Liberty one I made last year, both just simple sleeveless dresses. I decided I needed another one…

A couple of years ago on a trip to Goldhawk Road in London I bought 3m of a beautiful blue Liberty tana lawn. Tana lawn is so soft and smooth it almost feels like wearing silk, it’s lovely to wear, perfect for a summer dress. This one is a gorgeous shade of blue (cobalt??) with a very delicate design on it, I love it!

I looked through my dress patterns, that’s when I realised how many of them take nearer 4m! Eventually I found Simplicity 2917 which reckoned with 60″ wide fabric you only need 2.70m. It’s a princess line dress with a full-ish skirt, a nice shaped neck-line and a sleeveless option. Bingo, I thought! Only tana lawn is only 54″ wide and sometimes 6″ makes all the difference!I wasn’t anywhere near being able to get it out of 3m.

Then I had a brainwave! I cut the side back and the side front pattern pieces along the ‘cut here for the top’ line, I left the front and back full length, reasoning that I’m sure I’ve got patterns with such a design feature! Without the full length of the two side pieces there was now plenty of fabric, in fact I even cut the skirt an extra 4″ long as I do like my skirts pretty long! I even remembered to add extra seam allowances (most of the time!)

The first thing I did was to stitch the side front and backs to their respective skirts and then just made the dress up as usual. As it’s such a busy print the seams don’t show anyway, but even if they did it I think would look fine.

I also removed the centre front seam from the pattern, cutting it on the fold instead. The neckline and arms have facings on the pattern, I stitched a neckline facing as per pattern, but I didn’t fancy an armhole one, so I bound it like a quilt instead with a strip of bias-cut lawn. The zipper was hand-stitched in as I find that easier and neater than fiddling round with the machine and the hem was stitched on the machine with the blind hemming stitch. The only thing I would add with hind-sight, is pockets.

I wore my dress to work today, it was cool and comfortable and I think it looks really pretty. I love the way it twirls!

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About craftycreeky

I live in a busy market town in Yorkshire with my husband, kids, dogs and chickens. I love trying new crafts, rediscovering old ones, gardening, walking...anything creative really
I started this blog after my New Year resolution worked so well. My resolution (the first one I've ever kept!) was to post a photograph of my garden on Facebook every day. My hope was that I would then see what was good in the garden and not just weeds and work, which was my tendency. The unexpected side-effect was that I have enjoyed many more hours in the garden.
I am hoping that 'The Crafty Creek' will have the same effect.
Happy creating!

You’re inspiring me to get my sewing machine out again, it’s been gathering dust for a while now. However, I’m envious of and full of admiration for your skill and confidence in adapting a pattern. The result looks really lovely.

Thanks Donna, I wore my red summer dress to work the other day, a new girl saw it hanging in the changing room and admired it, someone else looked at it and said ‘there’s no label in it, it’ll be Margaret’s!’

Well, you can imagine their prices over here – $40 is far from unusual, but that is not a sale. I do not even recall seeing anything similar to lawn, Liberty or no, until about 4 or 5 years ago. Now I’ve managed to “collect” 3 pieces, only one of which I’ve made up. But am seeing the category “lawn” a bit more now, so am just waiting to match the right pattern with fabric… and keeping eyes open for more!